(Associate Director, Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Washington, D.C.) Davis is currently the Associate Director and Supervision Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for Supervision and Regulation (S&R) at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Davis is also the National Coordinator of the Partnership for Progress program, a Federal Reserve System program created to preserve and promote minority-owned institutions to enhance their ability to thrive in an increasingly competitive banking environment.

(Ph.D. Student, Pantheon-Sorbonne University, Paris, France) Houssem Eddine Bedoui studied engineering in France at Telecom ParisTech and Telecom SudParis. He has practical experience in telecommunications and information systems, and he has worked on demanding industrial and academic projects in these fields. He is interested in the social and charitable elements of Islamic finance and has worked in several charitable organizations. In 2007, he joined a group promoting Islamic finance in France which focuses on Islamic capital risk, investment behavior, and Islamic market indexes.

(Partner, Amereller Legal Consultants, Berlin, Germany and Dubai, United Arab Emirates) Bälz is a partner at Amereller Legal Consultants, a boutique firm specializing in Middle Eastern Business law with offices in Dubai, Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad, as well as in Munich and Berlin. Previously a partner in the Frankfurt office of Gleiss Lutz, Bälz is one of the pioneers of Islamic finance in continental Europe and has worked on numerous shari‘a compliant transactions in Europe and the Middle East.

(Director, Global Studies Institute, Charlton, Massachusetts) A specialist in Islamic Law of Finance, Mahmud Awan received his LLM degree from Boston University Law School after receiving his LLB degree in Islamic Jurisprudence from Punjab University in Pakistan. He received his Ph.D. in International Economics and Finance from Clark University in 1976. He has been a Distinguished Professor of Islamic Finance at INCEIF Global University in Islamic Finance, located in Malaysia, where he also served as the Founding Dean of the Faculty and Chief Academic Officer from 2006 to 2008.

(Professor, Department of Economics, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) Aydin is currently the director of the Neuroeconomics and Well-being Program at Florida State University. The program specializes in well-being studies, both at individual and societal levels, conducting qualitative and quantitative analysis of happiness related issues. Aydin received his bachelor's degree in Public Finance, his master's degree in International Economics, and doctoral degrees in both Education and Economics.

(Doctoral candidate, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India) Salman Siddeeque Ali is a doctoral student specializing in business policy at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. His major research interests are the internationalization and re-internationalization of firms, corporate diversification strategy and economic performance linkages in emerging economies, and the impact of organizational and functional structure on firm performance.

(Lecturer, UAE University, Al-Ain, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates) Salim Al-Ali has been a noted and excellent academic over the course of his education. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree with honors in shari‘a specializing in jurisprudence and its fundamentals in 2006. Then, he was appointed as a teaching assistant at the Law Faculty, UAE University. Soon after, he went to Malaysia where completed the Master program in Islamic Banking and Finance in 2010. While there, he was selected as a best student in the Masters program in Islamic finance.

(Research Fellow, Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom) Ercument Aksak is a Teaching Fellow and visiting Research Fellow in Finance and Economics, with special reference to corporate finance, risk management, and Islamic economics and finance, at Durham University. After several years of work experience in an international financial consultancy firm and with the Turkish government, he has returned to academia and pursued his PhD studies. During his PhD studies, he was also involved in numerous projects in international financial firms in London.

(Junior Joint Director, State Bank of Pakistan, Faisalabad, Pakistan) Nisar Ahmad was born in 1965 in Pakistan. He obtained a masters degree with distinction in economics from Punjab University in Lahore in 1990. He obtained an MBA with a specialization in Islamic Banking and Finance from International Islamic University, Kuala Lumpur in 2008. His professional qualifications include being a Diploma Associate of the Institute of Banking in Pakistan. He completed a one year Correspondence Course in Islamic Law from Shari‘a Academy, International Islamic University, Islamabad.

(Program Coordinator, The Fellows Program of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Nirvana Abou-Gabal joined the Fellows Program after working at the Harvard Kennedy School's Center for International Development. An Egyptian native, she has also worked as a business analyst at an organization in Cairo which provides technical assistance and consulting services to microfinance institutions in the Middle East and Africa. Nirvana received a BA. in Marketing and International Business from George Washington University.